RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – SCO Group is not ready to give up in its fight for ownership of Unix and its contention that Linux infringes on Unix.

Darl McBride, chief executive officer of SCO Group, told MarketWatch on Thursday that the company was knocked down but not knocked out by a federal judge’s decision earlier this month who ruled Novell, not SCO, owned Unix.

"We’re not dead; it’s just one of those situations where if you’re knocked down seven times, you have to get up eight,” he said.

In an interview with InformationWeek, McBride also said the judge’s ruling wasn’t completely negative for SCO.

“It wasn’t until the next morning that we got out the 102-page ruling and read it that we realized there are some very powerful things in there that cut in our direction,” he said.
“The untold story is that the judge and Novell agree that any Unix development work done post-1995 is copyrighted work held by SCO. For instance, the 64-bit Unix work we did with Project Monterey is still ours. The second is that Novell has a noncompete issue with us going forward that the judge didn’t throw out. Linux has become Novell’s platform product of choice. Well, that platform product of choice is subject to a noncompete issue with us.”

Novell Chief Executive Ron Hovsepian sees matters differently. MarketWatch quoted him as saying the court decision cut “the core” out of the SCO case and also eliminated “a threat” to the Linux community.

MarketWatch and Groklaw, the Web site that has covered SCO’s fight against Novell, IBM and Linux in general (including Red Hat) noted that SCO was back in court Wednesday to file more paperwork. MarketWatch said the latest move was an appeal, but Groklaw had a different interpretation.

Whether the latest move is a full-fledged appeal, the filing indicated that SCO simply is not going to surrender on Unix.

Meanwhile, SCO has also not given up on its claims that Linux infringes on Unix. InformationWeek noted that an arbitrator is to decide that issue.

“What we have to do is go to the arbitrator in December in Switzerland and see how that plays out,” McBride said.

He also told MarketWatch that SCO remains targeted on what it considers Linux infringement.

"That stuff’s all squarely in the cross-hairs," he said.